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iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more
21–30 of 194 posts
Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more
#22[flagged]
Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Government bodies also move slowly, and they usually telegraph their moves years in advance. When corporations act like they're caught off guard by a new regulation it's usually (though not always) just a PR move. It's not improbable that Apple could have predicted that separating the ecosystems would be legally beneficial, even if they didn't know about this specific regulation back then.
> Government bodies also move slowly, and they usually telegraph their moves years in advance. There's no evidence of that in the pre-2019 period. See https://fasos-research.nl/vista-jmn/files/2022/10/VISTA-Poli... "For much of the 2014-2019 period, European Commission leaders, most notably those linked to DG Competition, articulated a commitment to the use of traditional competition instruments to meet the needs of…
> There's no evidence of that in the pre-2019 period.
GDPR was proposed in 2012 and implemented in 2016. Any reasonably intelligent observer would look at the contents of the GDPR and predict that the EU was interested in sweeping regulation of large American tech companies, and it would have been foolish to think they'd stop at data use. Apple's legal experts and lobbyists are more than just reasonably intelligent observers, they were interacting regularly with EU regulators and knew that change was on the wind, even if they didn't know the details before 2019.
Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Government bodies also move slowly, and they usually telegraph their moves years in advance. There's no evidence of that in the pre-2019 period. See https://fasos-research.nl/vista-jmn/files/2022/10/VISTA-Poli... "For much of the 2014-2019 period, European Commission leaders, most notably those linked to DG Competition, articulated a commitment to the use of traditional competition instruments to meet the needs of…
> There's no evidence of that in the pre-2019 period. GDPR was proposed in 2012 and implemented in 2016. Any reasonably intelligent observer would look at the contents of the GDPR and predict that the EU was interested in sweeping regulation of large American tech companies, and it would have been foolish to think they'd stop at data use. Apple's legal experts and lobbyists are more than just reasonably intelligent o…
> they were interacting regularly with EU regulators and knew that change was on the wind, even if they didn't know the details before 2019.
One wonders, then, why Apple didn't do more to open up the iPhone and protect it from regulation before the EU had to force something worse down Apple's throat. (The tone of Apple's PR yesterday was startlingly bitter and combative.) Moreover, it's not clear that the iPadOS ploy is even going to work in the end: "the Commission has opened a market investigation to further assess whether Apple's iPadOS should be designated as gatekeeper, despite not meeting the thresholds." https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...
In fact, Apple has made a series of anticompetitive moves with the App Store in recent years, enraging third-party developers and practically daring regulators to bring down the hammer.
Besides, iPad is already kind of a neglected software platform. Some developers still don't bother to specifically support it with their apps. Lack of iPad support isn't going to stop anyone from going outside the App Store if they can; indeed, this move may backfire on Apple by causing even fewer apps to support iPad.
Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more
#25> iPadOS on the iPad is a completely different platform in the eyes of Apple and the European Commission. Is this correct, or is Apple making the distinction here?
Is what correct? Is iPadOS a different platform than iOS? That's not an easy question to answer. It's a different OS, it has a different name, it runs on different devices, it has different features, it runs different apps. But iPads ran "iOS" for many years, and iPadOS was clearly just a rebranding of the iOS that ran on iPads. On the other hand, iOS (then iPhoneOS) was announced as a "compressed and streamlined" ve…
As sibling points out, it's about what the EU thinks.
"iPadOS" runs iOS apps, and iOS apps can be full fledged "iPadOS" apps with a single binary. The distinction is a business distinction, not a technical one.
There are strange tiny differences in what APIs are offered, but the same is true of two Windows computers, for example, for one that has a DirectX capable graphics card and one that does not.
Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more
#26> iPadOS on the iPad is a completely different platform in the eyes of Apple and the European Commission. Is this correct, or is Apple making the distinction here?
Given the literal billions of dollars at stake, presumably this has been viscously litigated already, and this is where the EC and Apple have landed
If you presume that the EU has actually signed off on this and all the other DMA changes Apple announced, then the DMA at least as it affects Apple is useless.
If iPadOS was deemed separate by the EU prior to the DMA rulings, that's interesting, and am wondering if anyone can cite a source.
EDIT: Posted elsewhere, they have an iPadOS specific inquiry: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...
Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more
#27Suddenly it makes a lot more sense why Apple made a big deal about iPadOS being its own separate OS, even though the differences are so minimal.
Actually I think the real reason is even lamer.
The iPhone is their baby, and the iPad is decidedly not. It’s a good business, it’s a big business, and they sell a lot of them, but in terms of revenue it has never really exceeded the Mac and doing QA for both iPhones and iPads running the same operating system at feature parity year after year was holding their baby back. That’s why when they do new releases, things like widgets on the Home Screen appear on iOS a year ahead of when it does on iPadOS. By renaming it iPadOS, they’ve given themselves cover to hold stuff back a year and roll features out on a tick-tock schedule cuz now the iPad is running a totally different operating system.
That it may benefit them here dealing with the EU’s shenanigans is probably just a nice incidental bonus, but that’s just my own cynical take. Honestly though, gun to my head, I think prioritizing iPhone features and QA probably is the right thing to do. I like my iPad, but it couldn’t replace either my iPhone or my Mac, and it’s a supplement to both at its best.
Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more
#28[flagged]
I'd take fixing the MacOS issues I raised, which have been already marked confirmed over a year ago...
Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more
#29Re: iPad users will miss out on third-party app stores, browser engines, and more
#30> iPadOS on the iPad is a completely different platform in the eyes of Apple and the European Commission. Is this correct, or is Apple making the distinction here?
Is what correct? Is iPadOS a different platform than iOS? That's not an easy question to answer. It's a different OS, it has a different name, it runs on different devices, it has different features, it runs different apps. But iPads ran "iOS" for many years, and iPadOS was clearly just a rebranding of the iOS that ran on iPads. On the other hand, iOS (then iPhoneOS) was announced as a "compressed and streamlined" ve…
now that iPadOS has features that frequently trail a year behind iOS — lock screen widgets, off the top of my head — as well as features like Stage Manager and whatever it is I'm using right now to make my iPad an external Mac display, I think it's safe to say we're at least four years into a now non-trivial hard fork.